Internet relay chat (IRC) is a chat system which enables text-based simultaneous chatting among a number of people. In the Internet relay chat, a network is formed of a server and a plurality of terminal devices. A message from one terminal device is transmitted via the server to the respective terminal devices and is displayed on a display device each terminal device has. An identifier is assigned to each member or participant, and the identifier is displayed, being associated with the message from that participant displayed on each display device so that the chat participants can know who sent that message.
In a chat system, it sometimes occurs that plural conversations take place in parallel in plural virtual spaces. In such a case, too, identifiers are used in the respective virtual spaces. The identifiers can be set by the respective chat members, and, frequently, the same identifier is used in different virtual spaces, which sometimes causes troubles. Let an example be assumed, in which a company has set up a virtual space for dealing with customers' needs (hereinafter referred to as customer virtual space). When one of the company's customers asks one of the company employees a question about something, the customer's identifier, which the customer usually uses, is displayed on the display device of the company employee together with the content of the question or message. Similarly, the employee's identifier is displayed with the answer or message sent to the customer.
In this case, the identifier of the customer being displayed with the message gives more information than the information that the member sent that message is one of the company's customers.
In other case in which plural customers and plural employees are chatting in this customer virtual space, a customer might not be able to know who is the company employ he or she wants to chat with and, therefore, might ask a question to another customer wrongly.
Also, an employee may chat with another employee in a virtual space for use in arrangements among the employees (hereinafter referred to as employee virtual space), in parallel with the chatting with a customer in the customer virtual space. In such a case, there is a possibility that the employee, while intending to chat in the virtual space for the customers, might chat in the employee virtual space, or that the employee might send a message, which should be sent to another employee in the employee virtual space, to the customer who the employee is chatting in the customer virtual space, which resulting in undesirable leakage of inside information in the customer virtual space.
The displaying of an identifier in a chat results in disclosure of private information of a speaker or message sender. Some participants may not want it, in particular, when an unspecified number of people participate in the chat.
Discussions may be held through a chat system. What are talking on line in the chat are time-sequentially displayed on the display device of each terminal device. However, it is difficult to grasp the trend of the opinion of each speaker at a time by looking at such display.
An object of the present invention is to solve the above-described problems in a chat system by converting an identifier displayed with a message into a character string of other form.